Big Day of Bed Prep at our 'Biggie' Farm Site

Today we had an awesome time prepping beds over at what we've nicknamed our 'Biggie' farm site.
This site is on land owned by Scott and Robin Olsen. They are great people and really excited to have their land being used for agriculture. They just bought a fantastic New Holland tractor and have a 26 year old Yanmar, too. We worked with them, they both drove the tractors, loaded up with Nature's Needs and then Neil, Mishelle, Steve and I raked it out into piles and then evenly over the beds. It was so empowering to have 6 of us all working in sync. We spread dolomite lime over each row by hand. Then Scott came back in to do a final tilling of the beds. Very inspiring day!!!

(photos to be posted soon...)

Perennial Herb Patch: Day #4

Monday: We were back at prepping the beds. It is an irregular patch, so we talked over how we thought we could get the most uniform sized beds out. Then Neil cut bamboo stakes so we could begin measuring and marking it out. We managed to get 10 nice 2' x 23' with 1' paths and a couple smaller beds towards the farm's 'tractor road'. Very exciting! I walked out all the strings, tying at one end, tossing the twine over and Neil would put measure, put in the stakes and tie them off. It worked really well. There is so much good fluffy soil, we couldn't stomp the paths down, so we are making raised beds. Digging topsoil from the paths to add to the beds. We are planting mainly perennials here and some flowers, so we really want to make these beds the best we can now as we won't be digging them up again next year like annual beds.

We love having the bamboo around to use as stakes, strong, lightweight and readily available. Neil transplanted some on Saturday to start curving it around from the driveway a bit. It is similar to blackberries in that it spreads. But it is very functional and doesn't try to hurt you... It is a great wind and sound block on the north side of our house.

We listened to Terry Gross with Bill Moyer's on Fresh Air for the last hour we were digging 7-8pm. It helped. My uncle John sent us a link about this Moyers' special - BUYING THE WAR - it sounds fascinating and makes us wish we had a small tv for PBS. Moyers is back weekly with his new show 'Bill Moyers Journal'. Hopefully we will be able to get it and other episodes through netflix this winter to watch on the computer.

Quite a bit more digging to be done, but the prep is really moving forward and it takes a long time for most of our perennial herb seeds to germinate, so we have time.

All Cleaned Up !

We worked with Steve and Mishelle at Abundant Harvest from 8-2pm weeding the flower and herb beds to prep them for planting and also spread an amendment called Nature's Needs, that is made here in North Plains, on some of the vegetable beds to make way for another 5 cu. yard load to be brought.

Then we went over to check on and water our seedlings in the greenhouses. Got back home by 3pm and cleaned the house and ourselves to get ready for our second friend visit, Rachel + Matt.
We had a great night and it was her birthday eve..
Neil made delicious burritos and they brought chips and drinks - including a local wine made in Forest Grove, OR by David Hill called 'Farmhouse Red' - really sweet. They brought their mud boots, so we walked around the farm and into this really wild blackberry maze at the bottom. We have not made time for exploring, so it was really fun and nice to laugh so much, too.

Perennial Herb Patch: Day #3

NEIL-Awesome!!!! was up pre-dawn and out digging up our big perennial patch, he spent all day outside working in the rain, moved the barn wood pile, set up storage along the barn-garage, transplanted bamboo + Naomi started digging up a 7' + 15'(?) plot along the east side of the house, also in the rain.. and pulled the dock and coltsfoot weeds from the front garden. We had tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch. Neil is a super power. Naomi seeded strawberries + tomatillos and took down to greenhouse.

Rainbow at sunset.

Friday CSA Deliveries

We try to take it easy before the delivery route. They are usually ready for us between noon and 1pm. It's a long demanding day which we respect. Neil did work on the perennial patch a bit in the morning, but we mainly got ready for our first Friday doing the route alone. It was a wonderfully sunny and warm all day, clear blue skies. Perfect since this is the really curvy, winding roads up and down day. I drove and Neil navigated and ran the baskets. I do love driving the truck. It's quite an upper body strengthener as we do so many stops and sooooooo many turns and curves and up hills and down windy hills. It is a big rig sized wheel and you are the power for the steering... Someday we'll graduate to being able to do the route individually, but definitely not until later this summer as we'll have a whole new route to learn when the new season starts in June. Then we'll have that same season for the coming year.

I managed to quickly snap some photos of how beautiful spring is here when we were stopped.

Major Seeding Day

There will be no knitting activity until deep winter. In the meantime, wooden knitting needles make great seeders! If a hole is needed, it is easy to poke the correct depth. Hardly any seeds we're planting go deeper than a 1/4" and some rest on top... Then you wet the tip of the needle and you can pick up one to as many seeds as needed per plug and when they touch the damp soil, they release and voila! Seeding requires a lot of our concentration and not talking to each other as we are counting in our heads and trying to keep track of dark brown specks of seed that are the same color as the dark brown soil mix...

The Wrath of the Blackberry Vines / Perennial Herb Patch: Day #1

First I must say how thankful I am to be dealing with real blackberries. Not the kind that mean you have a serious office job and must be in constant contact with bosses, clients, co-workers even when you are nowhere near a computer.

But the kind that bear succulent fruit. The kind that we've paid a lot of money to occasionally treat ourselves to a small pint of out east. The kind that prior to Oregon, we would never have imagined hacking to death with a vengeance.

But hack to death we have.

The blackberries are ready for us. They see us coming and they are prepared.

So are we, we say, shrugging it off. We've got long sleeves, long pants, serious boots, snips and a feverish desire to make way for some perennial beds.

The berries laugh. Have you seen what we can do? Cut us all you want they say. Thorns like the sharpest cats claws, curving, catch and hang when you excitedly take a glove off to salvage some moss... They wait and get you when they can. They are amazing. They hoard things that are not picked up in time. Archaeological digs is what Neil called it to Polly and James. We find their past projects and often that involves a lot of pots. The blackberry vines grow through that rich potting soil and make a sharp V growing back up and out, which ensnares the pot. They shoot roots out right there to anchor the pots or other bounty down and leaf forward. Their roots are little leaves of what they will become.

I tried to honor them.

I talked highly of them while we hacked and piled their stems up for long term composting.

I took photos in awe of them.

And earlier than Neil, I called it a day. It's addictive work, but I knew we had planned a good deal of indoors night work and that would need leftover energy. The sun was about to set. We were also set to work with Steve for the first time at 7am on Sunday, transplanting tomatoes and other seedlings.

We had cleared the bulk of the patch we want to till up and start planting in. We had created a lush pile of potting soil from emptying all the pots we found and we had, for the most part, unearthed a handy 3 part compost structure.

It was still so nice out though and Neil kept hacking. I thought, maybe I'll stay out a little longer, too, see if there's an odds and ends bit to do and then straighten up with Neil when he's done. So I ended up on the other side of our large northern bamboo thicket. I moved some broken pieces in out of the drive, accessing what we could cut, where we might want to transplant from. I was about to round the corner back towards Neil and was pushing in some broken bamboo, noticing some old blackberry vines. Hard, dry and sharp thorns, thinking about cutting them out another day.

I don't know how it actually happened, just that as it was, I felt an intense stupidity and then a freakish pain.

A vine took it's retribution. And thorned me in my right eyeball.

So fast, my eye was wide open. Wrestling bamboo, with spring-loaded thorn-vines mixed in at eye level - incredibly unwise. Dusk was a contributing factor.

Lesson of the Day: Respect the Blackberry Vines. Understand they are prepared for you + spring-loaded with thorns that are like having a cat claw you directly in the eye. Wear EYE PROTECTION.


*****as a footnote: Neil wanted to go to the hospital. I resisted as we don't have insurance and thought I could keep it closed and sleep it out. I did flush immediately, lots of watering, I iced it on and off and founds pressure points to help it water more. Then had a fitful 15 hours of laying down and trying to stay peaceful, it hurt sharply a number of times, but by 11am seemed to be fuzzy and not sharp and here I am. Grateful and a mistake wiser...*****

Peppers, Egglpant, Broccoli, Cabbage and Tomatoes, Oh My!

Polly gave us a great surprise gift of seedlings today that were ready to be potted up or directly planted. It was great to talk with her, too. We went over what areas we can use around our house and which trees they planted and learned a bit more history of the house. She's going to find their photo album from when they lived here and Seth who is now 17, was 1.

We set up on our work table outside and filled up lots of 4" pots, went through to choose the hardiest seedlings and snipped the rest. The transplanting went great. The weather was sunny and mild. We used the volvo as a staging spot, the black roof and hood were quite toasty.. and then loaded each completed tray in as we finished. When we were done we drove over to the greenhouses at Scott + Robin's.

They were home and it was the first time we'd seen them since coming back. Robin gave us a solid greenhouse operating demo and showed us all the Lemon Balm, thousands of volunteer plants we can transplant and use. Also a Cuban Oregano plant and succulents she's happy to have us take cuttings and make use of.

As soon as we got back home, we went to town on the area Polly said we could use. More on the blackberry clearing adventure tomorrow, back to work for now.